‘The Bachelor’ Contestant Mistakenly Reported Missing By Her Mom Explains How It Happened

Caralynn is a writer, native New Yorker, TV enthusiast, and dog mom to Hobbes.

While contestants on The Bachelor don’t typically make headlines for their exploits outside the show, Bekah Martinez had people talking recently, after fans discovered she was on a missing persons list — while appearing on the show.

The 22-year-old California native was reported missing by her mom back in November 2017 and landed on the missing persons list in Humboldt County. The incident was straightened out, and Bekah was removed from the list after a fan recognized her face among the photos of missing people shared by the North Coast Journal on Facebook.

The fan pointed out that Bekah (who the sheriff’s office explained had reportedly come to Humboldt County to work on a marijuana farm) has been appearing on this season of The Bachelor. Bekah was active on social media while the season was airing, so fans immediately knew that she wasn’t actually missing at all.

Bekah has since joked about the mix-up on social media, saying on Instagram that her story is a PSA to “always call your mom back.” After being eliminated from the show (as of the February 12, 2018, episode), Bekah was finally able to clear up exactly what led her mom to incorrectly report her missing and to clarify viewers’ misconceptions.

“A lot of people thought I lied to my mother, saying that I was on a farm when I was actually on The Bachelor, but no, I had already been eliminated from the show. I just decided to go up to the mountains with some friends for a couple of weeks. I was there for six or seven days without phone service, and I thought I was going to have phone service, and I told my mother that I would.

I just had this weird feeling on, like, the sixth or seventh day. I was like, ‘I need to go home now.’ So I got in my car, drove to where I had service, called my parents. Come to find out, only 12 hours before, my mother had called the Humboldt sheriff’s department saying that I was missing.”

Apparently, between November and February (when fans spotted Bekah on the missing persons list), no one had taken her off it after realizing she wasn’t missing.

Bekah also clarified that the marijuana farm she’d visited belonged to her friends, not her: “To set the record straight, I’m not a weed farmer. I’m still a nanny in LA. But yes, my friends have a weed farm up there.”

Bekah also addressed her recent elimination from the show, calling it “shocking.” She even admitted that she’d originally auditioned for the show hoping that the season’s star of The Bachelor would be Peter Kraus, not Arie Luyendyk Jr.

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